AI Set to Supercharge Phishing in 2019

The coming year will see a mix of old and new as phishing is supercharged with AI but reported vulnerabilities continue to cause organizations problems, according to Trend Micro. The security giant claimed in its predictions report this week that phishing will continue to grow in popularity as exploit kits fade. The number of detections of the latter has fallen from over 14.4 million in 2015 to just 261,000 today, while blocked phishing URL volumes have jumped from 8.1 million to over 210 million over the same time period. However, attackers will be looking to make phishing even harder to detect, via new tactics such as using AI to monitor executives’ online behavior, and AI-enabled chatbots to lure users into clicking on malicious links. Another social engineering-based attack set to hit the mainstream in 2019 is SIM-swap fraud, according to the vendor.